For my English class innovation project my friends and I are documenting war stories from veterans. (I explain it in better detail in my Breakfast With Champions post.) We have a blog called http://breakfastwithchampions.wordpress.com/ and a Vietnam veteran named Jack White found our intro video on that blog and commented that he would love to meet with us. We met up with him this past weekend and he told us some amazing stories. It was great to hear from his perspective about things that my textbook could never tell me.

Just a quick update on our twenty percent project, Breakfast with Champions, that was published in the OC Register. The response we got back has been amazing and we cannot wait to interview more veterans.

Two weeks ago we got our project published in the OC Register newspaper. It was by pure chance that they were there the same day we were, but we are so thankful that they were kind enough to take interest in our project and interview us. Take a look!

In a previous post, I wrote about the twenty percent projects that my teacher has implemented in his classroom for the past couple of years. This past Friday, my project began.

Let me tell you a little about it and what I have learned so far.

Photo from OC Register Article by Mackenzie Reiss

This is Demetrius Harakas. He owns the Fantastic Cafe in Santa Ana and is opening a new restaurant in Seal Beach in a couple of weeks. He loves the 50’s and his diner is decorated in just that fashion. He had searched for a car like the one above, for almost all his life.

His relatives in Massachusetts found one for him, he bought it, and then had it shipped to California. He had it restored and now, for the past eight months he has picked up WWII veterans from their homes and taking them to the restaurant for a free breakfast and an eager ear to talk to. As of now, he estimates that he has taken 70 WWII vets and their spouses to breakfast.

Photo from OC Register Article by Mackenzie Reiss.

When he first brought his car home, and told my family and I his idea; I was amazed. I thought, “What a cool experience for both him and the veteran”, but never thought anything more of it. It wasn’t until we were given the assignment to “Find a need in the community, and feed it” that I came up with the idea of producing videos of Demetrius’ time with the veterans. I knew that he wasn’t documenting them, except by personal journal, and I thought, “Man, that would be so cool to film.” Especially, because in school we learn the factual history. Though teachers try to use videos of firsthand accounts, we mainly have to learn facts: dates, names, and places. How awesome would it be to have first hand filmed conversations with the veterans, available to everyone around the world?

So, I found a friend, brainstormed, pitched our idea to the film production class at our school and found someone to teach us to film. Friday was our first day of filming, and it was such a great experience. My two partners and I were able to sit down with a navy corpsman named Jim, who served in WWII, Vietnam, and Korea. He was in the service for 24 years and had at least 30 medals on his lapel. He was at the rank of master chief, with his official title being, master chief petty officer.

We learned so many interesting things from him, and his stories made history come alive for us. That is exactly what we hope to accomplish in our project; to make history come alive for generations to come, when there are no more WWII vets to tell about it. Did you know that WWII veterans are dying currently at a rate of 600 a day? We want to preserve their accounts and stories before they are all gone, and become mere reenactment and guesswork.